


Solemn Vow

by mikemunhoe



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bondage, City Elf, Dissociation, Half-Elf, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Possession, Suggestive Themes, sorry idk how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25947799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikemunhoe/pseuds/mikemunhoe
Summary: So when he’d yanked his hands back, hugging them to his chest as he watched the frost slowly fade from Bull’s skin, he worried that he had finally, and very royally, fucked things up.
Relationships: Inquisitor/Iron Bull, Male Inquisitor/Iron Bull, The Iron Bull/Male Lavellan (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 35





	Solemn Vow

Cain flexed against the silk that binded his hands to the bed posts. The Iron Bull kissed along the elf’s torso, occasionally pausing to nip or suck little red marks into his skin that would surely end up bruising.

Bull was trying to coax the tenseness from Cain, but it wasn’t working. Lavellan just couldn’t relax, his muscles tightening every time Bull’s lips made contact with his skin, and not the tightening that came from pleasure, but rather fear, like bracing for a punch.

It wasn’t Cain’s fault. Or maybe it was? He didn’t know, he was just so afraid. He’d never submitted to anyone before. Growing up in an alienage would do that to an elf, putting on a brave face and having to wear it for so long and so often that it soon becomes too painful to take off. 

“You need to relax for me, kadan” Bull murmured, glancing up to the Inquisitor with commanding eyes.

Lavellan could see the slight worry behind them. Bull wasn’t the only one who was good at reading people. It came from the worried and weary glances, waiting for a guard to raise their hand to him. Reading the twitch in a shem’s fingers and the crinkle of their crow’s footed eyes as their brow drew tight and the skin of their forehead rippled.

Cain thought maybe he was afraid of the Iron Bull. He’d been the first Qunari he’d ever seen and Lavellan had startled when the last body fell and a big gray hand had clasped his shoulder. He’d turned ready to punch, his sword already having been sheathed on his back, only to have his arm caught, a boisterous and slightly surprised laugh bellowing out across the beach and carried into the restless sea by angry, crashing waves.

“Relax!” Bull smiled, “the fighting’s over!” 

Cain jumped back at the imposing figure splattered with vint blood, yanking his arm away from the Bull. He nervously took in the large man before him, trying his best to comprehend the gray skin and giant horns.

“Oooh, I see,” Bull laughed again, this time his features falling into a gentle and warm expression that put Cain a bit at ease, “You’ve never seen a Qunari before, huh?”

“I-I uh… I’m sorry,” Lavellan stuttered out, his Starkhaven-esque accent thick with nervousness, “I didn’t mean to—” 

“Aw, no! It’s fine. No harm done,” he grinned, and though it was kind and welcoming, Cain still felt uneasy, a feeling that diminished over time but never quite fully went away.

He had spent his whole life assessing threat in the name of fear. It was a behavior not so easily misplaced, even amongst those he loved. Even with Cullen, one of the kindest people he knew and one of his closest friends, he tended to flinch whenever the man moved towards him, much to the former Templar’s discomfitment. It made chess rather uncomfortable.

Cain could feel himself retreating into his mind, a practice mastered during the beatings he’d received from shem and dalish alike. It was an interesting thing, to be alienated by elvhen clansmen and women, simply for sharing blood with humans, and for him to be considered just another knife-ear to the shems, the same species his mother belonged to. She’d been a noble, too good for him, he’d thought, having thrown him into the slums as she had. 

It didn’t matter, in the end. He didn’t feel like either, really, he just felt like himself.

He wasn’t aware of his body having moved until Bull’s voice, thick with suppressed pain, cut through the haze.

“ _C’mon,_ ” he gritted out, “ _come back to me, Cain,_ ” Bull rumbled through nearly clenched teeth.

Cain. Cain. That was him. That was his name. This was real. He was still here.

Lavellan fell into his consciousness just in time to see the glowing of green, web like markings fading from his skin. He had managed to break his bonds, sitting up with his hands clasped to the Iron Bull’s biceps, frost spreading from his palm and across the qunari’s gray skin, whose own hands had gripped Cain’s shoulders. 

He’d become possessed once again.

Or, he had always been possessed, but it had decided to rear it’s well meaning head in this most intimate of moments. A spirit of Protection. An embodiment of defense and safety. It’d been with him since his eighteenth birthday, when he’d been laying, bloody and broken, in some back alley behind a bar. Some thugs had mugged him before pushing him to the ground and kicking him a few times for good measure, cracking a rib or two. 

His vision faded in and out, blackening around the edges. He thought maybe he had cracked his head on the stone bricks when he fell. Struggling to breathe, he saw a hand come into view. He thought it was glowing. He thought maybe he was hallucinating.

He reached a weak hand out in response and murmured a broken:

“Help.”

He’d only ever let a select few of the Inquisition know, of course. Josephine, Leliana, and Cassandra, in case anything ever went awry, then Solas, when he was in need of a guiding hand, and lastly, not by choice, Cole, who’d figured it out on his own.

“Past the mark: the sun. Past that: you. And past that… two bodies, two minds, two souls. Like a reflection of a reflection, a broken mirror, a—” and then he paused, his face twisting up in confusion before recognition dawned on his face, and he smiled sweet and wide, “It’s nice to meet you, Protection. My name is Cole.”

The Iron Bull himself had, let’s say, not taken the information amazingly well. The qunari naturally had an aversion to ‘demon crap’, as he’d so eloquently put it so many times before, and though Cain had known it wouldn’t immediately go over well, he’d watched how Bull had warmed to Cole, and knew he could warm to Cain’s affliction as well. It took time, and a lot of carefully thought out yet intrusive questions from Bull himself, but they learned to cope with it.

So when he’d yanked his hands back, hugging them to his chest as he watched the frost slowly fade from Bull’s skin, he worried that he had finally, and very royally, fucked things up. It was one thing for Bull to love Cain, aware of but not exposed to his other half, but it was another for said other half to, well, out right attack him just because he’d gotten too nippy while Cain was lost in thought. 

With wide eyes Lavellan looked to the Bull’s face, gearing for his reaction and preparing for the worst, only to find the qunari staring at him with furrowed brows and a look of pity. 

No, not pity.

Worry. Concern.

Not for himself, but for Cain. For his inquisitor, his partner, his lover, his _kadan_.

“I’m sorry” the elf choked out, tears threatening to spill.

He’d been crying so much lately; at night in the privacy of his quarters when the weight of the day’s activities crashed down upon him, all the emotions he was forced to mask in polite and not so polite company bubbling over.

“You don’t need to apologize, kadan, just tell me what happened… _why’d_ that happen?”

Cain paused, racking his brain for a reason. Reason tended to be in short supply, he thought.

“I think I just… lost focus? Usually it doesn’t… it _can’t_ force itself out like that unless I, y’know, lose myself a bit. In my thoughts, and stuff” Cain said, barely above a hoarse whisper. He’d never told anyone about this type of thing. He finds he does a lot of things with Bull that he’s never done.

“It was scared then. I was gone and it doesn’t know you. It thought you were hurting it, hurting me and my— our body, and—”

Bull placed a large hand on Cain’s thigh, grounding him. The Inquisitor had begun to ramble, to hyperventilate. He’d started to let the spirit's own fear bleed in. Cain looked to Bull with wide, wet eyes.

“Breathe, kadan. You’re not in any danger here. You’re safe” he muttered, his voice calm and deep, eyes piercing.

“I know,” Cain replied, and, for once, he believed it.

He knew Bull wasn’t saying that to him, even if he _had_ needed to hear it. He thought maybe the qunari knew that not all of Lavellan’s emotions were always of his own mind. That sometimes, it was something else that was in need of comfort.

Bull leaned over, untying the torn silk from the bedposts, as well as the scraps from Cain’s wrists, and discarded them on the floor.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked. Bull was so kind, so patient.

“Y-yeah. I think I’d like to just lay down, now, if that’s… okay with you?”

“Of course” Bull smiled gently, shifting their bodies so Cain was laying on top of him, the elf’s face nuzzled into his neck, the mercenary’s large arms wrapped around his Inquisitor. 

“I think I can come up with some ideas to keep you grounded when we do this, if you’d like. I want you to be happy, kadan”

“I’d like that. The ideas, I mean. And, well… to be happy,” Cain paused, a minute or so passing before he continued, a small smile coming to his face, “I’m happy now, with you.”

Lavellan couldn’t see it, but he could hear it in the man’s voice when he spoke, the wide smile on his face.

“I love you, kadan.”

“I love you too, Bull.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know how I managed to write this I just started typing and didn't stop lol


End file.
